DIOGENES THE CYNIC once tried to enter the theater at the end of a performance, even as everybody else was leaving. When someone, puzzled, asked him why, Diogenes said: "This has been my practice all my life." (This history is recounted by Laertius in Lives of the Eminent Philosophers, among many other stories starring Diogenes the Cynic.)
As with every Cynic "anecdote" (or chreia, as they called it in ancient Greece), several layers of meaning are buried inside.
There is, first, the notion of philosophizing as a live performance, which Diogenes embodied like few thinkers, ancient or modern. On this view, philosophy is not a purely theoretical affair, something to be thought out and formulated in impenetrable jargon, but rather a way of acting and being.
When he wanted to prove a philosophical point, Diogenes used not just his speech but his whole body, his sensuous presence in the world. To make an argument, you just have to make a move — sometimes literally.
When some philosopher was trying to prove, before a gullible audience, that "motion did not exist," another story goes, Diogenes said not a word but "stood up and walked about" — the best possible counterargument most economically delivered…
As with every Cynic "anecdote" (or chreia, as they called it in ancient Greece), several layers of meaning are buried inside.
There is, first, the notion of philosophizing as a live performance, which Diogenes embodied like few thinkers, ancient or modern. On this view, philosophy is not a purely theoretical affair, something to be thought out and formulated in impenetrable jargon, but rather a way of acting and being.
When he wanted to prove a philosophical point, Diogenes used not just his speech but his whole body, his sensuous presence in the world. To make an argument, you just have to make a move — sometimes literally.
When some philosopher was trying to prove, before a gullible audience, that "motion did not exist," another story goes, Diogenes said not a word but "stood up and walked about" — the best possible counterargument most economically delivered…
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/how-to-swim-against-the-stream-on-diogenes/
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